3:46 p.m. Central European Time
I press my nose to the window because I want to get as close to Paris as I can.
Also, I’m literally being smushed up against the window in the cramped back row of this van.
Our entire French Club from Sandy Springs High School is packed in here—all twelve of us plus our faculty chaperone, Mademoiselle Alvarez. I’m seated next to two of the biggest guys in my grade (both in terms of size and ego): Cody Alton and his best bro, Tyler Travers. They’re having a Flamin’ Hot Cheeto–eating contest while Cody’s girlfriend, Nneka Okafor, talks to her followers on Instagram. (“Bonjour, y’all! We’re in Pareee, the city of love!”)
I try to ignore all the shenanigans and the eau de Cheeto permeating the van as I focus on the world outside. The sky is gray—it’s March, and a little chilly—which just adds to the whole romantic French vibe. So far, on our ride from the airport, I haven’t caught a glimpse of the Eiffel Tower or the Arc de Triomphe or any of those really famous landmarks. But the closer we get to the heart of the city, the more every block looks like a scene from a Parisian movie:
Outdoor cafés with striped awnings dot every corner, their straw chairs facing the street as if the diners are enjoying a show and we’re the performers. A full jazz band set up next to an ornate fountain plays a French version of Beyoncé’s “Crazy in Love.” A confection shop displays macarons so delicate and colorful they look like tiny, handmade toys in the window.
My heart soars and I grin, soaking it all in. Even the Burger King we drive by is housed in an exquisite old stone building with carved gargoyles and balcony terraces with twisty railings and windowsill boxes overflowing with bright red blooms. It’s perfect.
Okay, so maybe I’m romanticizing a Burger King.
But I’m just trying to embody the title of that classic French song “La vie en rose” by Édith Piaf (if you’ve ever watched a movie or show set in Paris, chances are you’ve heard it). The song title means “life in pink.” It’s about seeing the world through rose-colored glasses. And as Mom told me recently, when I went into one of my moods, “Sometimes a little forced positivity prepares the space for real joy to come flooding in.” I’m pretty sure she got that wisdom from her Single Mamas Wine and Book Club, which is why I trust it completely.
Suddenly, Cody Alton lets out a massive, cheesy burp in our back row. Tyler Travers bursts out laughing.
Ugh.
“Gaston, c’est dégoûtant!” Mademoiselle Alvarez snaps, turning around in the passenger seat to scold Cody for being gross.
Gaston is Cody’s French Club name—we each had to choose a French name for ourselves, and Mademoiselle Alvarez insists on using those names while we’re here in Paris for our highly anticipated spring break trip.
“Gaston” (as in the evil gym bro from Beauty and the Beast) really does suit the hulking, muscular Cody well—so well that the whole French Club has actually started calling him Gaston instead of Cody. I’ve started thinking of him as only Gaston. The fact that his girlfriend chose the French name “Belle” for herself is just a little too perfect.
At that moment, Nneka—aka Belle—nudges Gaston, looking annoyed.
“Sorry, babe,” he says.
“Excusez-us!” Tyler (aka “Marcel”) calls out to the van. The others—including Mademoiselle Alvarez—laugh at that.
I don’t. I roll my eyes.
Ever since Tyler Travers reappeared in Sandy Springs, Georgia, back in January at the start of this semester—just as suddenly and mysteriously as he left six years ago—everyone has fallen under his spell. No one but me seems to see him for the liar and life-ruiner he actually is. Even worse, he’s an egregious manspreader. His ridiculously long legs, which have helped propel him to become an instant star basketball player at our school, are splayed
wide in this back row; his knee is almost touching mine, which is so annoying. I shove myself even closer to the window and readjust the charcoal-gray wool beret on my short dark hair.
Yes, I’m wearing a beret. One I found while thrifting with my bestie, Ashley Alford, just a few weeks ago back in Georgia.
When you wear a beret on your first visit to Paris, you might as well hold up a sign that says, I’M A CLUELESS TOURIST, PLEASE MESS WITH ME. Except, you know, all in French.
During my extensive research in the weeks leading up to this trip, I googled, What should I wear in Paris? The results told me, not in these exact words, but pretty close: Anything but a beret, you walking cliché!
Yet I refuse to apologize for looking like a naïve American. I’ve spent my entire life trying to hide the fact that I’m corny and extra and therefore will fail at every standard measure of coolness that my generation lives by. But what did that get me?
My heart got shattered anyway. By Lucas Zhao. On Valentine’s Day.
No wallowing allowed in Paris, I remind myself as I look out the window again. I made that vow to Ashley before I left Sandy Springs. Besides, I didn’t pick up dog poop all over my apartment complex and sell my bootleg version of pain au chocolat (Costco croissants that I chopped into pieces and smothered in Nutella and skewered with toothpicks with little paper French flags that I drew by hand) and save every penny just to make myself miserable over Lucas in a foreign country. I did enough of that in America.
The van stops at a red light (somehow even the stoplights look chic here). Instinctively, I touch the friendship bracelet on my left wrist that Ashley gave me for my sixteenth birthday. The beads spell out ENCHANTED—the title of my favorite Taylor song. (Ashley’s is STYLE, which makes sense because she’s obsessed with fashion and will become the best-dressed diplomat in the world when we grow up.)
I know Ashley would approve of my whole look today, including my dark jeans, black sneakers, and the blue silk-blend handkerchief tucked into the front pocket of my Old Navy blazer. (Yes, I’m wearing a blazer instead of a hoodie like the rest of my classmates are. Deal with it.) That handkerchief was a gift that my dad bought for my mom on their Parisian honeymoon. Mom gifted it to me for this trip. Dad would be so proud that I made it to his favorite city, and he would never have judged me for expressing myself
via accessories.
The van rounds another corner, and I swallow hard at the thought of Dad. My late father’s love for Paris—and the fact that I never got to come here with him—partially inspired my list.
I first typed my list out on my Notes app. But to make it feel more official, last night I printed it out on a sheet of thick cream-colored paper that’s now stashed somewhere in my roll-y bag. I know the list by heart, though:
THE ULTIMATE PARIS TO-DO LIST (BEN’S VERSION)
1. Marvel at THE one and only Mona freaking Lisa.
2. Sit and read a book at a charming outdoor café.
3. See the Eiffel Tower at night from the Pont Alexandre III bridge.
4. Explore gay PAREEEEEEEE in the Marais.
5. Take a picture of the “prettiest street in Paris” (according to Emily in Paris).
6. Have a baguette-and-cheese picnic on the banks of the Seine River.
7. believe in love and enchantment again.
(Okay, so number seven isn’t an official entry on the list. I guess you could say it’s non-canon, which is why I wrote it in light pencil, all lowercase.)
We’re only here in Paris for four days, so I’m a little anxious about accomplishing everything on my list. Some items might be a little hard to tick off, especially with Mademoiselle Alvarez being so strict.
The list is a mix of stuff that I know Mom and Dad did on their honeymoon that I want to re-create, plus some extra “plot points” based on the kinds of books and movies that I love. In those books and movies, main characters are always wandering around European museums or reading books in cafés when suddenly, as if on cue, a handsome French boy steps forward to introduce himself, changing both their lives forever.
4:01 p.m.
As we unload our sore bodies and heavy bags from the van, I stare up at the hostel where we’ll be staying. It’s called the Grand Paris Youth Hostel, but nothing about it seems grand or, well, youthful.
In fact, the building looks like it might have survived cannon fire in the time of Les Misérables. The stone walls are streaked with green mold and what seems like centuries of black grime. It reminds me of those parts of Disney World where they make the outsides of buildings dirty and run-down on purpose so they seem authentic—but this is, you know, actually authentic.
“All right, étudiantes,” Mademoiselle Alvarez bellows, clapping her hands as we gather around her on the sidewalk. “Let’s do another count-off!”
Everyone groans. We already did a count-off when we first got into the van.
Nneka looks up from her fuzzy pink phone case, indignant. “Do we have to do that right now?” she asks. “Everyone’s going to think we’re a bunch of American kids from the suburbs.” She smooths down her gorgeous center-parted black tresses, looking around self-consciously at the Parisian strangers strutting past, none of whom seem to care about us one way or another. They’re all too busy smoking, or talking on their phones in loud French, or looking fashionable.
“You are an American kid from the suburbs, Belle,” sighs Mademoiselle Alvarez.
“That’s not how I identify,” retorts Nneka snootily.
“Yeah, that’s not how we identify,” repeats Cody/Gaston, draping his muscly arm around Nneka’s shoulders.
Nneka and Cody are the Power Couple of Sandy Springs High School, which is saying something—it’s the biggest school in Georgia, with over four thousand students, and almost all of them follow Nneka and Cody’s joint social media account, @TwoHeartsOneSoulXOXO, to watch them be the hottest couple 24-7. (Even I couldn’t resist giving them a hate follow.)
Mademoiselle Alvarez ignores them. “Okay, start counting!” she hollers so loudly we all flinch.
Nneka nudges Gaston. “Oh yeah,” he mutters. He clears his throat and booms, “Un!” One.
“Deux!” says Josie “Colette” Brown. Two.
There’s no logical reason why Mademoiselle Alvarez needs us to count off again, just like there was no logical reason why she made us count off right before we boarded our plane at the Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport and then again while we were flying over the Atlantic Ocean. She’s been watching too much Unsolved Mysteries if she thinks one of us could vanish in the middle of a commercial flight.
But I guess I understand why she’s paranoid. She’s chaperoning this trip all by herself after the French Club’s other faculty chair, Monsieur Higgins, emailed all of us the night before our flight saying he’d come down with a case of food poisoning “for the history books.” Apparently, he’d made a romantic home-cooked dinner of escargot au gratin for himself and his fiancé in anticipation of our trip, and the snails must have gone bad.
For the record, I totally believe Monsieur Higgins is telling the truth. He was almost as excited as I was for this trip, plus he’d attached a doctor’s note to his email.
I can’t remember seeing fresh snails in a grocery store in Georgia. I really hope Monsieur Higgins didn’t dig them up from his backyard or something. As I’ve learned from YouTube, you can literally die from that.
Focus, Ben. I don’t want to miss my turn in the count-off; I need to prove to Mademoiselle Alvarez that I can be trusted to explore Paris on my own, that I won’t get lost or pickpocketed or kidnapped. We’re only allowed one hour of “independent exploration” per day, which I need if I’m going to check off everything on my to-do list. And as
Mademoiselle Alvarez and Monsieur Higgins have reminded us over and over again, “independent exploration is a privilege, not a right.”
Just as my fellow French Club member Karen “Amélie” Firkus says “cinq” (five), my head suddenly feels naked. I wheel around. Tyler Travers, smirking, has snatched my beret.
“Don’t you know wearing this kind of thing makes you a prime target for pickpocketing?” Tyler says, holding the beret high over my head.
I don’t even bother to jump for it—there’s no point. Tyler was a little bit shorter than me when he moved away from Sandy Springs, but he came back six foot four and transformed into Captain America. His shoulders are filling out his baggy gray Sandy Springs Basketball hoodie. His blond hair flops casually over his forehead, and when he brushes it back, it settles into place in slow motion, as if perfected by AI.
These are not the reasons why I hate Tyler Travers, but they certainly don’t help his case.
“What are you, a bully now?” I whisper through clenched teeth. “Give it back.”
“Not a bully,” he says, flashing his smug grin. “Just looking out for you.”
“Oh, please,” I say. “That’s the last thing—”
“REMY!” booms Mademoiselle Alvarez. “EARTH TO REMY!”
I give a start. Mademoiselle Alvarez’s eyeballs are bulging in my direction. “Remy” means me. I chose my French Club name in honor of my favorite cartoon rat from Ratatouille.
“Je suis désolé, mademoiselle,” I stammer. “It’s just that—”
“WHAT’S YOUR NUMBER, REMY?!” she blares. “You’re gonna have to pay a lot more attention if you’re getting your independent exploration time tonight, Remy!”
“Huit,” I mutter. Eight.
I throw a glare at Tyler. He tosses my beret to me carelessly. I don’t catch it—hand-eye coordination has never been my strong suit—and it falls to the ground.
“Thanks a lot,” I hiss.
“Dix!” Tyler pipes up, ...
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